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 After more than a century of neutrality, the outbreak of World War II meant that the United States found its seagoing vessels threatened by the allies (Great Britain, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary). In 1915 Britain began seizing vessels bound for Germany, and Germany began submarine warfare against enemy vessels. Even with this aggression, Woodrow Wilson's diplomatic maneuvering kept the United States from becoming involved, and in 1916 he campaigned for re-election with the slogan "He Kept Us Out Of War." In 1917, however, Germany's offer of an alliance with Mexico for which the latter would regain the American Southwest and its resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare (which it had earlier suspended after U.S. protests) led the U.S. to enter the war on the side of the Allies. German aggression resurfaced in the 1930s, and much of the world was at war by 1939. The U.S. joined the war only in December 1941 after it was attacked by Japan, Germany's ally. By the end of World War II, the U.S. generated half of the world's economic output and was the world's only atomic power. Knowing how the Great Depression had contributed to bringing about World War II, after the war the United States promoted the Bretton Woods system of managing the global economy, founded the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, liberalized trade with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, funded the Marshall Plan for European Recovery, and provided aid to reconstruct Japan and develop industry in East Asia. 
Next: Balancing the Power: The Cold War and Related Conflicts, 1945–89 |
